The Slab, 2024, 354 p. (No price given.) Reviewed for ParSec 12.

Notwithstanding the success of The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and the Discworld series (both of which editor Donna Scott mentions in her introduction) I have never found Science Fiction and humour to be easy bedfellows, though I do admit to having a few guffaws when reading Eric Frank Russell’s Next of Kin many (many) moons ago. Indeed, I read the first few Discworld books and was only amused once – by an outrageous pun. (In Equal Rites in particular I thought there was a more serious book struggling to emerge from under its surrounding baggage.)

But we all need a good laugh in these disturbing times. So, with a will, to the contents.

As with all anthologies the quality and execution vary but in one with a premise like this it is inevitable that the tone of each story tends towards being similar.

One story that certainly hits the spot is Sundog 4 by Alice Dryden. A homage to the corpus of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson – familiarity with that œuvre may be required for a full appreciation – its plot has the breathless yet carboard quality of the different puppet series (and of the ones with actors whose dialogue might as well have been uttered by puppets) while slipping in direct references to those many shows. Very enjoyable. One might even say FAB.

Elsewhere we have a marriage broker on a Venus where every inhabitant – even the tentacled ones – seems to be Jewish, struggling to find a match for his client. A man signs up for an Intergalactic Cultural Exchange Plan with predictable unlooked for results. There is a warning about the implications of (mis)using an up to four-dimensional photocopier, particularly as regards photocopying arses – or ex-girlfriends. A minor convict set to do community work in an old people’s home is surprised by the inhabitants’ behaviour. A bored spaceship Captain leaves an AI in charge of his ship while he goes into cold sleep: after a 60 year delay in waking due to a meteorite strike he finds the ship’s bots have gone rogue. A robot cobbled together from spare parts by an aged Professor to commit burglaries for him fails in its final attempt; but he doesn’t. A bunch of Spiderbots battles against Mandroids® and Robosapiens® to try to save the human world. A family finds their virtual holiday goes wrong; for a start they’re not all on the same one. A scenario where every living thing has its own type of Grim Reaper, De’Swine, De’Fungi etc, and they have a philosophical problem with the big one, De’Ath. On a world plagued by sand an experienced, not to say old, female drug smuggler has to negotiate yet another double cross. Would-be students of a Present Studies course are encouraged to kill Hitler via time travel while their attempts are monitored by a course tutor who knows those attempts will fail. Dating Apps are beyond old hat when 4C (foresee; get it?) comes along to show users a trailer of how any relationship will evolve: a situation itself not beyond manipulation. In a future depression where eggs have become horribly expensive a banjo player makes his money by his seeming ability to make chickens lay freely; but he’s really selling something else. A mad scientist invents a process rendering his body incorporeal seemingly only in order to torment his stepson (who is savvier than he thought.) Aliens attracted by Earth’s radio and TV emanations abduct a woman to explain it all: they remain baffled; she puts the experience down to a spiked drink. People who shuffle through existence after the bombs fall cope by going to open mic nights. A religious woman who dies in undignified circumstances – though not anything like as shameful as her husband’s demise – gets a surprise in the afterlife. An explanation of the history, and future, of humans’ fear of spiders. A waitress in an Australian restaurant discovers the menu’s ‘kangaroo in orange sauce’ option is a manifestation of an alien invasion. The malfunctioning of a teleportation device poses an ethical dilemma for the duplicates it spews out every twenty minutes. To pep up an ageing lothario from a long line of such with an affinity for ginger, his doctor arranges for him to attend a Ginger Girls Gala, a convocation of those delightful lovelies. A transcript of a Prime Ministerial Press conference where it is repeatedly denied that time travellers have come back from the year 2345 to interfere in the present day, and where the questions spiral into more and more bizarre territory. A report outlining the genesis and results of five failed experiments in eugenics. A newly married man buys the naming rights of a star for his wife: twenty years (and an impending divorce later) they find themselves transported to that star’s system, where they are being worshipped as gods. A rich man’s attempt to remove any influence of trade unions on business practice, by travelling back in time to have a law passed, has unexpected consequences: not least for him.

Comedic fiction can be hit or miss in the eye of the beholder. Laughs in Space has more than enough hits to satisfy the jaundiced reviewer.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- Two stories’ titles are missing from the contents page – though they follow the starting title Random Selection. There are some uneven paragraph indentations. Otherwise; “‘He’s brain in a jar!’” (He’s a brain in a jar!) ambiance (ambience,) “then the girl up and asked” (upped and asked,) a piece of direct speech opened with a single quotation mark but ended with a double one, “a cut-and-dry case” (the phrase is ‘cut-and-dried’,) “and laid back” (and lay back.) “A horde of Flergians were spread out in the garden” (a horde … was spread out,) antennas (antennae [as used elsewhere],) “yelled to the top of his lungs” (yelled at the top of his lungs,) Jims’ (x2, Jims’s,) “the skin on her arms not as taught” (not as taut,) slipperier (what’s wrong with ‘more slippy’?) smidgeon (smidgin or smidgen but definitely not smidgeon,) “off of” (just ‘off’. Please?) “a per centage” (a percentage,) Professors’ (Professor’s,) Professors (Professor’s,) epicentre (centre,) “a trail of bone-white husks litter the highway” (a trail … litters the highway,) “none of them … have a clue” (none of them … has a clue,) miniscule (minuscule,) “Woward meister” (Meister,) “of a film … of a bean growing, its roots uncurling,” (its shoots surely?) “but he’s no idea” (but he’d no idea.) “‘Who’s Wendy,’ Candy asked’” (‘Who’s Wendy?’ Candy asked,) “the image pixilated (pixelated; pixilated means drunk.) “‘It was just figure of speech’” (just a figure,) D’Apes (elsewhere De’Apes,) “lay a … hand on” (laid a … hand on,) “into De’Apes face” (into De’Apes’s face.) Mortallity (Mortality – spelled correctly one line later,) “looked pointedly looked downwards” (only one ‘looked’ needed,) “steadied themselves” (x 2, in both cases this was an individual; steadied themself?) “‘And who come for them?’” (comes.) Gavrilo Principe (Gavrilo Princip,) “had lain the table” (had laid the table,) “Dai lay down the hammer” (laid down,) “‘I can say with them for good’” (I can stay with them for good,) “when you know fully well” (the idiom is ‘know full well’,) “the rest of the room are hanging on his every couplet” (the rest of the room is hanging on… ,) “from whence they came” (whence = from where, from whence then = from from where, just ‘whence they came,) a full stop after the closing quotation mark of a quote instead of before it, “it as too real” (it was too real,) “for six and a half decade” (decades,) in one story though not in others the convention of a repeated opening quotation mark on a new paragraph within an extended piece of dialogue was not followed (x 2,)  a missing full stop, “before fished them out” (before I fished them out,) “ginger nut biscuits and ginger snaps” (aren’t they the same type of biscuit) bikkies (x 6, this affectionate term for biscuits is usually spelled biccies.) Games of Thrones (the author probably intended the plural of Game,) “‘since record began’” (records,) “the committe were somewhat mollified” (the committee was…,) two out of five of one story’s subheadings were italicised when the first three were not, “seven hundred ninety two” (seven hundred and ninety two,) “taught and impressive muscles” (that’ll be ‘taut’, then,) “were stood” (were standing,) “were sat” (x 2, were sitting,) “it had taken her taken her quite a long time” (remove one ‘taken her’,) “‘this the leader of our army’” (this is the leader,) “barring Pilates’ way” (Pilates’s way,) “‘Ready!’ came Pilates reply’” (Pilates’s.) “Stood at either end of the generator they each pulled a leaver” (Standing at either end of the generator they each pulled a lever.)

Four Square, 1967, 253 p. First published in 1953.

I remember fondly from my youth a novel by Russell titled Next of Kin, a light-hearted contact with aliens story where a human was captured and convinced his alien jailers that each human had an invisible companion called a Eustace, which had impressive powers. Not literature by any means but quite funny – a trait unusual in SF. Having now read this book I am reluctant ever to go back to that earlier one for fear of destroying those memories, because Dreadful Sanctuary is not very good.

The set-up is that each of a series of spaceships, all bound for Mars and built by various countries, has suffered a calamity. It seems as if someone – or something – is deliberately preventing a successful landing. Viewpoint character John Armstrong decides to find out who or what. (When reading his various adventures to that end I was reminded of the YA book Tom Swift and the Captive Planetoid which I also read recently.)

By videophone he contacts a Professor Mandle who has a theory about layers around Mars potentially causing the problem and has an idea to invetsigate this During the call Mandle appears to suffer a heart attack and dies. This later gives Armstrong the opportunity to meet and question Mandle’s sister Clair. She is as capable a person as her brother was but apart from sharing her ideas with Armstrong has no other agency in the book, beyond Armstong’s possible romantic interest in her.

Russell’s style here draws on US demotic speech and mannish wisecracks as in film noir. Though he also manages to insert a few classical and literary allusions by and large the prose is no more than workmanlike and contains frequent – not altogether approving – references to consumer products such as Vitalax (not to mention the advertisements for them) and a popular song titled “Skiddin’ with my shiver-kid.”

Armstrong’s researches take him to the Norman Club where he is asked a strange question, “How do you know you’re sane?” Armstrong doesn’t know, of course, but his interlocutor is sure of his own sanity since the club is in possession of a device known as a psychotron which can establish sanity beyond doubt. Armstrong’s subjection to the machine

Normans or Nor-mans claim to be normal men and not only sane but originated centuries ago from Mars and do indeed, in order to guard that history, wish to prevent other humans reaching there. There have been previous instances of implicit racism in the book – at one point Armstrong thinks of a stereotypical country named Bungo Bungo, at another he says, “‘That’s mighty white of you’” – but with the Normans it becomes explicit. According to them only white-skinned people came from Mars, yellow-skinned are the only true terrestrials, brown-skinned are Venusians, and black-skinned are Mercurians. The white people on Earth are descended from those banished from Mars because of their insanity. Earth is a prison for the insane, the dreadful sanctuary of the title. So much for the psychotron.

Only the spaceships and a handheld weapon which induces arterial blood clots make this in any way Science Fiction. The plot about a group of lunatics with aspirations to incite wars need not involve any fantastical speculation at all.

We also have the inherent difficulty of portraying the future and avoiding the unexamined assumptions of the time, assumptions all too apparent seventy years down the line. In Dreadful Sanctuary, despite habitual use of videophones, newspapers are still a main information source, accessed via recorder booths, and interpersonal calls are to devices still fixed in one place. Women, even the intellectually gifted ones such as Clair Mandle, are restricted to the domestic sphere or a job as a secretary. Then again, how will SF, or indeed any literature, written today stand up to posterity’s scrutiny?

Pedant’s corner:- Plus points for manœvre. Otherwise; queezy (queasy,) Lissajous’ patterns (only if Lissajous is plural, otherwise Lissajou’s,) Mississippi, Mississipi, “hung by the neck until dead” (hanged,) Papazoglous’ (only if Papazoglous is plural, otherwise Papazoglou’s,) “‘if only one makes safe return’” (makes a safe return,) sextette (sextet.) “The fellow laid flat” (lay flat,) sunk (sank,) “cock a snoot” (cock a snook,) “prone in the morgue” (that would be supine in the morgue,) gaget (gadget,) “rarely he occupied” (he rarely occupied,) “they’d accept him as a foe” (see him as a foe.) “His voice dropped back but was till clear” (still clear,) quartettes (quartets,) “titled back his head” (tilted,) dryly (drily,) “to both side” (to both sides,) Ploughkeepsie (Poughkeepsie,) “with a earlier” (an earlier.) “‘So out next step’” (our next step,) “he headed a a cohort” (only one ‘a’ needed,) “which the President has instructed him to prepare” (which the President had instructed him,) “even that the hydrogen bomb” (than the,) “for whom the bells tolls” (either ‘bells toll’, or, ‘bell tolls’,) “the saturine agent” (saturnine,) “one way of the other” (or the other.)